It was Tuesday, the day before the 2017 Reebok CrossFit Games kicked off.
Seventeen-year-old Cole Greashaber, a Teenage Boys 16-17 rookie, practiced the snatch in the athletes’ warm-up area, deep within the Alliant Energy Center exhibition hall.
As he cycled the barbell, he watched a stream of individual Games athletes pass by.
“I kind of just stared, I’m not gonna lie,” Greashaber said. “I was like, ‘Holy cow. There they are.'”
Though the Teenage Division of the CrossFit Games is just three years old, we’ve already come to expect greatness of its athletes. Yesterday, 16-year-old Taylor Babb posted a 195-lb. snatch, while 15-year-old James Sprague’s Run Swim Run time—29:51.50—would’ve been good enough for ninth in the individual men’s division.
With numbers like that, it’s easy to forget half the field has yet to earn a driver’s license—and unlike the veterans of the individual field, most have never competed before a camera crew and a crowd of thousands.
Do they get nervous?
“Extremely nervous,” confirmed 14-year-old Christian Gallaher after taking seventh in Assault Lunge—40 calories on the Assault Bike followed by a 100-foot overhead walking lunge with an 80-lb. dumbbell—this morning. “Butterflies are going through me before every single event.”
Gallaher, who is the youngest male of the 2017 Reebok CrossFit Games, said he’s never competed before this week, “or done anything in front of a big crowd of people.”
Seventeen-year-old Anna Weigand, a CrossFit athlete of four years, could relate.
Though she said her experience competing at the Arnold Sports Festival in Columbus, Ohio, has given her a taste for the pressure of being on the big stage, the goosebumps still come.
“I'm all good, and then they say ‘30 seconds’ and that's when the butterflies come,” she said.
As the seconds count down and her stomach churns, she closes her eyes.
“I think of all the training I've put in ... and all the fun that I've had with it, and that helps me calm down,” she said.
It helps that she’s used to pressure. A soccer player since age 5, when Weigand’s not doing CrossFit, she tends goal on the field.
“I feel a lot of pressure being the last person between the other team and the goal, and so that really helps carry over to the pressure that (competition) brings,” she said.
Lea Malo, 14, agreed.
Though she’s the youngest of all athletes at the Games this year and is in just her second year of CrossFit, she said her experience performing as a gymnast has trained her for the spotlight.
“You are the only one on the floor in front of everybody,” she said.
If you don’t have previous performance experience, Weigand suggests you make it happen. In addition to competing at the Arnold and other local competitions, she performed all of her Online Qualifier workouts in front of friends, family and coaches at her gym, Route 33 CrossFit in Marysville, Ohio.
And when it’s game time, it’s best to have a mental strategy in place, said Malo, who imagines herself giving a perfect performance before each event, a technique she learned from her coach, Karim El Hlimi, owner of CrossFit Villeray in Montreal.
“I try to visualize the best that I can so I perform the best,” Malo said.
When the butterflies overwhelm him, Gallaher takes a moment to pray. Then he mobilizes, grinding away the nerves as he works the tension from his muscles.
“Just like in training back home,” he said. “I stretch to keep my mind off it.”
Greashaber, a CrossFit athlete of three years and a competitive diver for 10, said focusing on himself instead of the athletes around him helps reign in his nerves.
“I just see it as running my own race,” he said after winning Assault Lunge for the 16-17 Division in 2:25.00. “If that means 20th, it means 20th. If it means first like it did out there, it means first. If I play my game and run my own race, it helps so much more than trying to go past someone next to me if later it will end up killing me.”
Most importantly, Weigand said it’s important to remember to have fun.
“Performing in front of this kind of crowd is a whole different experience,” Weigand said. “And it’s awesome.”
